Digital Justice and online harms in the context of the Online Safety Act

The University of Suffolk and the South West Grid for Learning are coordinating a national event on digital justice and online harms in the context of the Online Safety Act. The event will be hosted by the University of Suffolk at our quayside Ipswich campus, and is aimed at researchers, professionals, policy makers and experts by experience.

Following more than five years of mobilization by civil society and policy actors, the Online Safety Act (OSA) was granted Royal Assent in October 2023. The Act has been hailed as world-leading legislation, establishing the UK as “the safest place in the world to be online” (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology et al, 2023).

The OSA is designed to empower users, hold service providers to account and tackle online harms. This conference will bring together stakeholders from across the UK to explore challenges, next steps and new horizons in promoting online safety in the wake of the OSA, inviting talks, workshops and creative submissions from researchers, policymakers, practitioners and experts by experience.

The event will focus on preventing online and technology-facilitated violence and abuse, and promoting digital justice and inclusion, with a particular focus on gendered harms including image-based sexual abuse, cyberstalking and harassment, and technology-facilitated coercive control and domestic abuse.

Conference themes and topics include:

Policy – Implementation, enforcement and appraisal of the OSA; the Criminal Justice Bill; regulating harmful but legal content; intersections between gendered online abuse and radicalization/terrorism, the Istanbul Convention

Practice and communities – Trauma-informed, intersectional and culturally responsive practice; coordinated community responses to online harms; peer support and active bystander approaches

Technology – safety by design; trauma-informed and accessible design; generative AI and new frontiers in online and technology-facilitated harms

Experience – research, practice and/or lived experience focused contributions by survivors of online and technology-facilitated abuse